"Liberty once lost is lost forever"
A wise warning for citizens who don’t wish to become subjects
Our Consolation must be this, my dear, that Cities may be rebuilt, and a People reduced to Poverty, may acquire fresh Property: But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever. When the People once surrender their share in the Legislature, and their Right of defending the Limitations upon the Government, and of resisting every Encroachment upon them, they can never regain it. - John Adams in a letter to Abigail Adams, 7 July 1775
The Colorado Supreme Court ruling permitting Donald Trump to be removed from state primary ballots has garnered much attention (for the record, I’m not a huge fan of Donald Trump, and I’d rather him not be the candidate on the Republican ticket, but that is neither here nor there). I will not expound the absurdities of it here; it is merely a symptom of a greater sickness. I bring up this political parody because, while this injustice was wrought by the judiciary, it is evidence that our “Constitution of Government” has “changed from Freedom.”
We are long down the road John Adams described to his wife in his letter. Our “share in the Legislature” has, over time been surrendered. Perhaps it is because of the people who are voted in, which by extension, lays the fault on the voters themselves. Perhaps it is because of the parties and their manipulation of the people to suit the parties’ ends. Whatever the cause, it is clear that those in the Legislature no longer represent the people, and the Colorado Supreme Court ruling (among other things, like the 2020 election, the farcical J6 inquisition, the continued legal embroilment of Trump) shows that the better-than-thous in government do not trust you with your right/responsibility to vote.
Thus, they lie, cheat, steal, manipulate…anything to perpetuate their own power and prosperity, to make sure that they are able to forward their agenda - not to govern legitimately according to the Constitution and to serve the constituents they are elected to represent.
We not only have surrendered our share in the Legislature, we have surrendered, and many fight against, our right to defend “the Limitations upon the Government,” limitations imposed by the Constitution. When people resist the government’s “Encroachment upon” its Constitutional limits, those citizens end up vilified and persecuted, prosecuted and incarcerated, as is happening to Trump and as happened to those who were at the Capitol on 6 January 2021 (many of whom still sit imprisoned without trial - another violation of the Constitution).
Adams warned that, should the people so give up their power over government (the government represents us - we don’t answer to government), we are putting ourselves in position to permanently lose the liberty the government is intended to protect. If you doubt this purpose of government, you need simply to read the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…
and the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States:
We the People of the United States, in Order to … secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Preamble to the Constitution of the United States (emphasis mine)
The First Amendment was written, in part, to ensure our right to address our grievances with government without retribution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
First Amendment to the Constitution (emphases mine)
Government does not get to decide for whom we are allowed to vote (with the exception of a candidate who has actually been convicted of criminal activity). Government does not get to decide which of our rights we may exercise, nor when and where we so exercise them. Government exists to protect our rights. Let me repeat that for emphasis: Government exists to protect our rights. Rights are not privileges. They are not granted by government. They are not subject to government oversight. They are limited only insofar as they are used to infringe on another’s rights.
In addition to others mentioned, we have a right to push back against government, to insist our representatives govern according to the Constitution, not according to their own whims or wishes, nor those of other constituents whose wills may be in conflict with the Constitution. If we fully relinquish that right, shy of taking up the stalwart station and donning the mantle of “revolutionary*” to which our founding fathers arose, liberty will be lost forever.
*Though our government would label revolutionaries today as insurrectionists, the founding fathers believed it was both a right and a duty to stand against a corrupt government that no longer served the people:
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Ultimately any "blame" lays on humanity. Our greed, our desire for someone else to fix our problems, has led us to this point where our government is not representative and is completely corrupt. Voting now is a clown show, we needed people to step up and say "no, this is not the direction we want to go" long, long, long ago. But problems develop gradually and aren't noticed at first. The water has slowly come to a boil and most are still asleep not noticing.
Does God commanding us to obey give the one we are to obey the right to command us to do any and every thing? The conventional reply is that they're supposed to command only what God commands and if they command something evil, "We are to obey God rather than man."
Minor problem: That's not what the passage says. "Rulers are not a cause of terror for a good deed, but for bad conduct. So do you want not to be afraid of authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from it, for it is God’s servant to you for what is good. But if you do what is bad, be afraid" (Romans 13:3–4). That is a blanket statement about what rulers do; it's not a job description telling what they are supposed to do. Given the record of the powers that be, ordained of God, one wonders who supposes they are going to reward the good and punish the evil. Does God suppose it?
Let's look at ordination for a moment. There is a politician in our area, a black woman, a Christian active in the pro-life movement. She was conceived in rape. If her name has been written in the Lamb's book of life since before the foundation of the world, at the very least the rape and her conception were no surprise to God. He certainly did not do what was needed to prevent it, and we Calvinists would say that that rape was somehow ordained—God decided beforehand that he would work good through it (Rom 8:28)—though he is not to be blamed for it. And we would say that the rape was a sin.
Every authority I know of came to power through bloodshed of some sort, either directly or by inheritance. Lyndon Johnson is the clearest example in my lifetime, and Herod is the clearest example in the New Testament. Whether the bloodshed was justified or not is another question. We can be reasonably sure that the emperor Paul was talking about either killed off his rivals or inherited the job from someone who did. So "those [authorities] that exist are put in place by God" includes the idea that God puts those authorities in place by enabling them to kill off their rivals. Does God raise up / establish them? Yes. Do men establish them? Yes. Do they commit murder as part of the process? Yes. Is the God who establishes rulers good? Yes. Is the murder men commit in the process therefore justified? I think not (Rom 5:7–8; 9:19).
"True functional anarchy will never exist." Sure it will, depending on your definition of anarchy. Anarchy exists by definition whenever people consciously or unconsciously obey Matthew 20:25 and Luke 22:26. God originally designed Israel to be an anarchy: "There was no king in Israel," and the land "had rest [presumably from war, possibly from famine and pestilence]" for forty years three times (Jdg 3:11; 5:31; 8:28) and eighty years once (Jdg 3:30), a record unmatched during the monarchy (nor in our nation). God told Samuel that by asking for a king they were rejecting him (1 Sam 8:7), so clearly God had been willing to provide whatever they needed to make the anarchy work (1 Cor 10:13).
The Israelites thought the problem was their anarchy, not their idolatry, so they decided to fix it in 1 Samuel 8 (see Deut 17). God worked a bunch of miracles to show that Saul was his choice. Did he suppose that Saul was going to read the law every day and administer righteousness, fulfilling the description in Deuteronomy? Or was he giving Israel over to the desires of their hearts (Rom 1:24)? They insisted that they wanted to sin by becoming slaves (1 Sam 8:17, 19) to men, not to God (1 Cor 7:21–23).
So I contend that God's command to be subject to the authorities says nothing about the moral content of their commands. "We have to obey God rather than men." How do we know when that's what we're doing? Read Romans 13:8–10. Once they command us to murder, steal, defraud, or slander our neighbors, they have overstepped their bounds, and we do not have to obey.
Consider the logical end of your position: God has established two classes of people, the ruler and the ruled, the masters and the slaves. The former can take what he deems expedient from those who cannot defend themselves against him and do as he sees fit with it, and the ruled slaves cannot even speak against his actions without speaking against what God has ordained (Acts 23:5; Rom 13:2). I don't need to list all the commands to defend the poor and defenseless that go out the window with that view.
Legitimate authority is established by just, peaceful, voluntary means. It respects life, property, trust, and reputation. The state is the antithesis of all that.